El gran atentado

Date: 1944

Medium: Lithograph

Dimensions (cm.): 55.6 x 39.3

Alternate titles: Unknown

Published edition: Unknown. Méndez [1949?] gives number of impressions as 30 approx.

Contemporary publication: Unknown

References: Méndez INBA 67

Selected additional references (illustrated): Prignitz 1992, 89

Commentary: In 1944 Méndez was involved in a political controversy when his lithograph El gran atentado, which he entered in an exhibition of graphic work in the Decoración gallery, was rejected by a jury made up of printmakers Carlos Alvarado Lang, Julio Prieto and Francisco Díaz de León, supposedly on aesthetic grounds. Méndez’s print  depicted the attempted assassination of the president of Mexico, Manuel Ávila Camacho, by a gunman associated with right-wing military and clerical forces. 

In the print, the president walks in unison with Father Hidalgo, a hero of Mexican independence and great nineteenth-century President Benito Juárez, drawn in fine lines, floating in the air in an imaginary space, seemingly unaware of the ambush. Méndez represented the assassin as a ghostly officer in a cape and a peaked officer’s cap, shooting from around a corner. A donkey-headed orator brays to the side of the gunman, spewing swastikas onto a map of Mexico; he stands on children’s alphabet blocks with the letters P-A-N, the acronym for the Partido de Acción Nacional (National Action Party), the right-wing party of Mexico, which at that time had openly fascist leanings. 

The owner of the gallery, Eduardo Méndez (no relation to Leopoldo Méndez), apparently objected to this insinuation against the PAN, and declared that the jury acted on “their understanding that I did not want to convert my gallery into a political platform.” The artistic community of Mexico City rallied around Méndez on this occasion; the TGP mounted a counter-exhibition and the list of supportive artists included Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, and Chávez Morado. President Avila Camacho, the subject of the lithograph, bought a copy of the print for 500 pesos. Due to the publicity around the incident, the Taller attracted a number of new members. (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: Méndez's fellow TGP member Jesús Escobedo included a depiction of this print in his satirical lithograph Arte puro or Arte al servicio del pueblo.

Catalogue record number: 249